When It Comes to Beauty, It’s Good to Be Too Faced

Every 7.4 seconds, someone somewhere is purchasing a tube of Better Than Sex mascara. Since it launched in 2013, it’s been a hero product for Too Faced, leading their range of unabashedly feminine and wildly popular liquid lipsticks, bronzers and adorable blushes. “The hardest, most scientifically impossible thing to create in the cosmetics world—and get right—is mascara,” confides Jerrod Blandino, Too Faced Cofounder and Chief Creative Officer, to his captive YouTube audience. Difficult, yes, but as he has proven, not impossible.

Blandino researched the science of skin and hair care to determine which natural extracts (like nourishing Acacia Senegal) and highly effective peptides would lift, separate and curl the lashes in a way that no other mascara had. “I just wanted to create the most amazing mascara the world has ever known. It took years to get the formula and the brush right,” he says. The hourglass brush—inspired by the bust-waist-hip ratio of blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe—was just one of many tested for the final product. “When I got the latest sample back from the lab, I had one of the women in the office try it on, and when I saw the results I screamed, ‘It’s better than sex!’”

“It’s my greatest hope that my customers will feel the most like themselves in my brand. We want you to be the best version of you, not someone else.”

—Jerrod Blandino

Creating the world’s best mascara is the sort of thing you’d expect from an innovative brand like Too Faced. Since the ’90s, Too Faced has pioneered some of the industry’s major beauty breakthroughs, including the first ever glitter eyeshadow, lip-plumping gloss and 24-hour crease-proof eyeshadow primer—and it’s all thanks to Blandino’s laser-sharp intuition. “I’m a culture vulture,” he says, “I’m into everything pop culture, fashion and art. I sense what’s trending or what’s about to trend and, as a consumer just like you, I want the latest and greatest, so I spin that into what I create.”

Blandino and his husband, Too Faced Cofounder and CEO Jeremy Johnson, have created a brand that celebrates fierce femininity and the joy of makeup. Too Faced is a prestige makeup empire, inspired by confident, powerful women and men.

Ahead of the Too Faced launch at Nordstrom, we reached out to Blandino to get his take on beauty and to ask what item he can’t leave home without.

When I was working behind the makeup counter, some clients would completely melt down if we were out of their must-have lipstick or favorite product. We would lovingly refer to them as “Too Faced” for caring so much about what their face looked like. I loved those women, they were the best!

Packaging plays a massive role in the overall product. For instance, when designing Better Than Sex, you fought for the pink metal tube because you knew it was right. Why is packaging so important?

Part of Too Faced being an emotional brand is the romantic, optimistic, feminine, flirty appeal of how we present our products. Packaging is the first thing you experience when you pick up a new product, and you remember that feeling.

What’s the best beauty advice you’ve ever been given?

Break the rules. If you feel good in it, you’ll look great in it.

What is the Too Faced beauty philosophy?

It’s my greatest hope that my customers will feel the most like themselves in my brand. We want you to be the best version of you, not someone else.